The Imperial Underbelly

239 Pages·2022·10.153 MB·English

by  Gunnel Cederlöf (editor)

The Imperial Underbelly
The volume introduces a new analysis of interconnected labour and
economic history of colonial India and Scandinavia. From a recently found
archive of a railway contractor’s private and business papers, the studies
revise both Indian labour history and Scandinavian modern history, and
ties south Sweden into the British Empire. With deep insights into everyday
work practices of Indian and European contractors and manual labourers,
the book establishes a bridge across the globe, between two poor regions
as sites of extraction and industrial transformation, resulting from global
migration and capital fows. Drawing on rich archival sources such as
the Joseph Stephens Archive, Maharashtra State Archives, the National
Archives of India, and the British Library, the book ofers deep insights into
everyday business practices of European contractors in India, which were
rarely documented and have remained largely inaccessible so far.
A unique look into the labour and entrepreneurship practices under
British colonial rule in India, as well as its impact on the most transformative
years of modern southern Scandinavia, the book will be of great interest
to students, academics, and teachers of history, labour studies, subaltern
studies, colonialism, imperialism, economic history, railways, economics,
and Scandinavian and South Asian studies.
Gunnel Cederlöf is Professor of History, Linnaeus University, Sweden, and
member of the Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences in Colonial
and Postcolonial Studies. She specializes in the environmental, legal,
and colonial history of India and South Asia. She has taught at Uppsala
University and KTH Royal Institute of Technology. She is the author of
Founding an Empire on India’s North-Eastern Frontiers, 1790–1840:
Climate, Commerce, Polity (2014), Landscapes and the Law: Environmental
Politics, Regional Histories, and Contests over Nature (2008, 2019), Bonds
Lost: Subordination, Confict and Mobilisation in Rural South India c.
1900–1970 (1997, 2020), At Nature’s Edge: The Global Present and Long-
Term History (2018 with M. Rangarajan), Subjects, Citizens and Law:
Colonial and Independent India (2017 with S. Das Gupta), and Ecological
Nationalisms: Nature, Livelihoods, and Identities in South Asia (2006,
2014 with K. Sivaramakrishnan).

The Imperial Underbelly
Workers, Contractors, and Entrepreneurs
in Colonial India and Scandinavia
Edited by Gunnel Cederlöf
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Gunnel Cederlöf; individual
chapters, the contributors
The right of Gunnel Cederlöf to be identifed as the author of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The Open Access version of this book, available at www.
taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative
Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cederlöf, Gunnel, editor.
Title: The imperial underbelly : workers, contractors, and entrepreneurs
in colonial India and Scandinavia / edited by Gunnel Cederlöf.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2023. |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifers: LCCN 2022033742 (print) | LCCN 2022033743 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781032320922 (hbk) | ISBN 9781032328928 (pbk) |
ISBN 9781003317227 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Labor—India. | Labor—Scandinavia. | Contractors—
India. | Contractors—Scandinavia. | Economic history.
Classifcation: LCC HD8686.5 .I43 2023 (print) | LCC HD8686.5 (ebook) |
DDC 331.0948—dc23/eng/20220916
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022033742
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022033743
ISBN: 978-1-032-32092-2 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-32892-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-31722-7 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003317227
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
List of Contributors ix
1 Circular Migrations, Capital, and Opportunity:
A Global History of Scandinavia and India at the
Industrial Turn, an Introduction 1
GUNNEL CEDERLÖF
2 The Life of Contract Capitalism and the Building
of the Colonial Railway 26
ARUN KUMAR
3 Bureaucracy and Ideologies of Control in British
India: Social and Professional Networks and the
‘Contract System’ in Railway Building 56
RADHIKA KRISHNAN
4 Social Capital and Its Limits in Fortune Making:
Joseph Stephens’ Enterprises in India and
Scandinavia, 1859–69 72
DHIRAJ KUMAR NITE
5 Labour Practices and Well-Being: Construction
Workers in 1860s Western India 101
DHIRAJ KUMAR NITE
6 Circulation of Knowledge, Capital, and Goods:
Scandinavia and the British Empire 135
ELEONOR MARCUSSEN
vi Contents
7 Colonial Entrepreneurial Capital in the
Industrialization of Southern Sweden: The Huseby
Estate under Joseph Stephens 161
ERIK WÅNGMAR
8 Doing One’s Duty, Making a Future:
The Ironmaster’s Daughters and the Unceasing
Project of Rearing a Family 181
MALIN LENNARTSSON
Bibliography 204
Publications From Research Related to the Huseby
Estate and Joseph Stephens Archives 219
Index 222
Illustrations
Figures
1.1 Joseph Stephens 4
1.2 Weighing cotton on the Colaba Island, Bombay 10
1.3 The manor house at the Huseby Estate, 1870 14
2.1 Mhow-ke-Mullee Viaduct, 3,000 men employed, Khumnee
Hill, 1856 33
2.2 Part I, A copy of Stephens’ contract in Modi script dating
from 1865 35
2.3 Original copy of the contract between Stephens and
Reembhy Casseembhy 36
2.4 Contract with lime supplier, with a third-party guarantor
contract 42
2.5 List of tools and tent and with Yemma Muccadam,
January 1865 45
3.1 Engineers, contractors and other visitors to the Bhor Ghat
works on the Great Indian Peninsular Railways, 1856 62
4.1 The contractor Mr. Clowser at his workshop at Oonee
village. Constructions at Bhor Ghat 86
5.1 Railway workmen’s quarters at the Great Ravine near
Rajmachi Fort, 1856 117
6.1 Joseph Stephens (left) in a meeting at Huseby together
with regional timber merchants, most prominently M.
M. Warburg (next to Stephens) of Bark & Warburg,
Gothenburg, and Robert Ternström (sitting with arms
crossed) of Schmidt & Co, Karlshamn, 1870 148
7.1 At the entrance of the Huseby manor house, from left,
Joseph Stephens, his daughter Florence, two unknown
men, daughter Maggie, Elisabeth Stephens, daughter Mary,
unknown woman, circa 1900 167
8.1 Florence, Mary, and Maggie Stephens, mid-1890s 182
viii Illustrations
Graphs
5.1 Real wages in terms of price of subsistence living basket
in 1861 108
5.2 Wage inequality or distribution ratios: Skill premium 110
5.3a Subsistence or welfare ratios 115
5.3b Subsistence ratios (bare-bones subsistence basket) 115
5.4 Trend in price of subsistence basket, jowar, and rice 121
Tables
4.1 Proftability situation in rupees (Rs.) 82
4.2 Monthly share (Rs.) in the monetary value of output: An
indicative estimate (around the Bhusawal—Nagpur railway)
during 1862–7 90
5.1 Occupational pattern 104
5.2 Wages (Rs.-As-Pies). (1 Re = 16 As, 1 As =12 Pies) 106
5.3 Wages 107
5.4 Real wages in terms of the price of monthly subsistence in
base year 1861 (Pb) [MW/(Pt/Pb). MW—Money wage.
Pt—price in current year. Pb—price in base year] 107
5.5 Real wages in terms of the price of monthly subsistence in
1861 (Pb). (MW/(Pt/Pb)) 108
5.6 Wage distribution (inequality) ratios: Skill premium (mason/
coolie, writer/mason) 110
5.7 Subsistence basket 114
5.8 The cost of subsistence (Rs.). (Family size of 4.5 persons,
corresponding to 3.5 adult consumers) 114
5.9 Subsistence ratios: Annual earnings for 264 days/cost of
subsistence basket 116
Maps
0.1 Railway Lines in India circa 1870 xii
0.2 Berar and Khandesh circa 1870 xiii
0.3 Southern Scandinavia, Railway lines of interest, circa 1874 xiv
Contributors
Arun Kumar is Assistant Professor of British Imperial and Colonial His-
tory, University of Nottingham, UK. His studies on the social, economic,
and labour history of modern India have appeared in the journals South
Asia: Journal of South Asia, Past and Present, and Journal of South Asian
Development. He has been a research fellow at the Linnaeus University,
Sweden, the International Institute of Social History Amsterdam and the
Merian-Tagore International Centre for Advanced Studies (ICAS) New
Delhi. His current book project on working-class education, based on his
award-winning PhD thesis of Göttingen University, explores the dreams
and aspirations of Indian workers. Among his publications are ‘Letters
of the Labouring Poor: Letter Writing in Colonial India’ (2020), The
‘Untouchable School’: American Missionaries, Hindu Social Reformers
and Educational Dreams of Labouring Dalits in Colonial North India’
(2019), and ‘Skilling and its Histories: Labour Market and the Making
of Skilled Workers in Colonial India (1880–1910)’ (2018).
Dhiraj Kumar Nite is Assistant Professor, Ambedkar University, Delhi,
India, and Senior Research Associate at University of Johannesburg,
South Africa. He specializes in the history of well-being, labour rela-
tions, and entrepreneurship. His PhD in History, Jawaharlal Nehru
University, New Delhi, is titled ‘Work and Culture on the Mines: Jha-
ria Coalfelds 1890s-1970’. He was Postdoctoral Fellow at the Linnaeus
University, Sweden, and at the University of Johannesburg. Among his
publications are ‘Employee Benefts, Migration and Social Movement:
An Indian Coalfeld, 1895–1970’(2019), ‘Negotiating the Mines: The
Culture of Safety in the Indian Coalmines, 1895–1970’(2019), ‘Consent-
ing to Labour Appropriation?’: The Mineworker on South African Gold
and Coalmines, 1951–2011’ (2017, with Paul Stewart), and ‘Worshiping
the Colliery-Goddess: An Exploration of the Religious View of Safety in
Indian Coalminers (Jharia), 1895–2009,’ (2016).
Eleonor Marcussen is Research Fellow in History at the Linnaeus Univer-
sity, Sweden, and member of the Linnaeus University Centre for Concur-
rences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies. She was a MWK-COFUND